Leadership issues
From PLN
Leadership issues
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Library Leadership Network Peer Panel, December 2006
Edited by Frank Hermes, published January 3, 2007 For the final Peer Panel of 2006, we asked:
- What do you see as the most pressing issue for library leadership today?
We also asked panelists to suggest how we, individually or collectively, could best deal with that issue.
George Needham
I’m not sure it’s the biggest challenge facing library leadership today, but I think one of the things we need to be focusing on is creating user-centered institutions.
For most of the history of libraries, we’ve worked in a world where information was scarce and expensive. If people wanted to use the treasures libraries held, they had to do it on the librarians’ terms, take it or leave it.
That world is as dead as Elvis. People have nearly unlimited choice and access to information today. They have little use and even less regard for our traditional role as gatekeepers of the information storehouse.
To maintain our relevance and create a future role for libraries, library leaders need to start looking at what we do from the outside in. It’s time to get over ourselves. It’s time for us to realize that we are in a service business; a service business that ignores service is no business at all.
If you think that this “deprofessionalizes” librarianship, I would recommend to you the article "McMedical Care", by Penelope Lemov, in the December 2006 issue of Governing magazine. Lemov describes the growth of medical clinics inside retail stores such as Wal-mart and CVS. These clinics, staffed by nurse practitioners who use standardized procedures and protocols to treat mild, predictable ailments like ear infections and colds, are anywhere from 50% to 66% less expensive than having the same treatment in a doctor’s office. Even more important, the clinics are open at times that a regular medical office is closed, allowing people to take care of themselves and their kids without disrupting work and other schedules. If this can happen in health care, how can we think about ways to adjust what libraries do to reflect the real needs of our customers?
Jamie LaRue
Briefly, I believe the most pressing issue for library leadership today is the need to move from passive to active, from retail (waiting for you to come to our store) to wholesale (finding the people who need us). Many librarians in our nation are locked into their own navels; we need to open up, engage with our communities, assist in understanding their problems and needs, and develop solutions that help define and demonstrate the mission of the library.
Gary Strong
The search for relevancy comes to mind as one of the most frustrating and challenging issues we face. Most people (our customers and politicians) do not think negatively of libraries. The problem is that they don't often think of libraries as part of the solution to the challenges facing the broader community.
Library leaders seem to be frustrated that they have to continually promote and put libraries on the community agenda; whether public, academic or school. Let me tell you that every other facet of the public and academic enterprise has the same feeling. When pushed by legislators that there are many issues they must address, I am challenged to help that policy maker understand where libraries fit into the solution or the challenge they have just identified. When a colleague dean challenges that we don't need libraries anymore, I point out that the electronic information that every one of their faculty and students access comes because the library exists and licenses those resources for them at a tremendous savings to the academy.
Building partnerships with non profit community organizations that align with our values helps move public libraries forward in the community view. Partnering with academic departments in improving educational opportunity and research infrastructure so critical to the academic enterprise puts libraries at the table. Another important partnership is when we engage with faculty in the classroom in bringing information literacy skills to students to reinforce the use of quality information in the learning process.
By standing back and complaining about how underappreciated we are, we seem as those who only complain and moan. When we step forward with solutions and engagement we become relevant and involved.
All the best for an involved and exciting new year for libraries!
Mike Crandall
If I had to choose one thing, it would be communicating value. I'm using that phrase as an umbrella to cover a myriad of challenges, but it seems to me that libraries across the board are having an extremely hard time with this as the environment changes around us. Unless we can communicate why libraries are important with well-supported evidence in language that means something to funders and decision makers, our response to those changes will either mean nothing or be a temporary fix. To cite an example: two corporate libraries I was a part of at one time, that were arguably leaders in adopting many new technologies and services, have been gradually downsized, disassembled and parsed out to other departments over the years because there was not a strong voice defining the value of retaining the library as an entity. The functions are still being covered, but not by a central service, and not with as many resources as they had a number of years ago. Somewhere, the message that there was value in the library got lost, with unfortunate results. Similar stories can undoubtedly be told in all types of libraries.
On the other hand, we have some wonderful success stories that show how letting your constituents know why the library is important can not only help the library survive, but thrive. Library Journal's annual Best Small Library awards shows that it's not size or history that counts, but consistent communication and showing value to your community that brings recognition and support. It's not the individual programs or the cool technologies that matter, but what they do for the community. And this bubbles up all the way to the national level, where the message is much harder to shape and communicate among the many other important issues competing for our attention and budget dollars. Our library organizations, from the smallest to the largest, all face the same challenge-- how to communicate value in the most compelling way to the audiences that matter.
This means we have to start teaching this skill early, in our library schools for sure, but also in as many other ways as we can. It's not a single course or a one time learning--formal education is a start, but it's up to all of us to help each other learn as we go. Our own Library Leadership Network is a great example of enabling the larger library community to help each other, through providing a forum for discussion of these issues, with practical advice and concrete examples. Our professional organizations, academic library consortiums, state libraries, library vendors and suppliers, conference organizers, and many other organizations are all potential value communicators, and we need to support and encourage their efforts through whatever means we can. Reaching out to other disciplines and communities to learn from their mistakes and successes is also necessary; we don't know all the answers, and learning from others is a great way to help us find them. Until we understand at all levels in the library community how to present well-supported arguments for our services and offerings in language meaningful to our funders and policy makers, we run the risk of losing the institutions we value so highly ourselves.
Bill Crowe
The most pressing issue for library leadership today is timeless: to identify, recruit, prepare (including mentoring), and retain a diverse body of talented and energetic librarians and allied staff. The goal is to ensure a critical mass of visionary leaders and others skilled in management of complex organizations to promote the evolution of libraries--and allied cultural heritage organizations--in an increasingly, truly global, complex environment. Without capable people who have a worldview and eagerness to learn and experiment, all else is lost.
What to do? Here, too, nothing new: Move in wider circles in the communities we belong to and seek entree to people we do not normally interact with day to day. Talk and write about the issues surrounding us in the information economy and community life and how information professionals of all kinds can and do make a difference. Share the passion for learning that good librarians always have had. Too often, we hang back, and so lose the chance to convey the excitement of our work, and the satisfactions inherent in trying to make a difference every day for the people we serve.
For me, I always have tried to get involved in the life of the universities where I have worked (just ask me about chairing the Parking Commission at Ohio State!). I have joined the usual community groups and have volunteered for civic projects (spending five years as a member of the group that worked to make the 150th anniversary of the settlement of Lawrence KS more than a parade planning exercise was very gratifying). I do my share of talking with students in library schools, but also chat with bright undergrads and grad students who are grappling with career choices, as many of us do. I try to pay attention to new hires across the library system at the University of Kansas (just asking someone to have lunch--to listen--can make all the difference as a young person is getting her or his bearings). In short, I try to reach out and communicate--sending and receiving signals that what we do is work very much worth doing...for our own satisfaction and for society.
All of this seems so obvious, of course, but as we get busy with our own lives and careers there seems never to be enough time to raise one's head a bit and look for a chance to break away (break out?).
Related articles
The whole network of articles in PLN is related to leadership issues--but here are a few specifically related to community involvement/engagement and making sure there's a pool of talented future leaders.
- Leadership issues redux-May 2008 - the LLN Peer Panel considers key library issues once more.
Community engagement
- Let's catalog the community - Jamie LaRue discusses community engagement and the need for libraries to serve as central community resources.
- Telling your community's stories - Engaging the community by helping tell its stories.
- Attracting funds - The LLN Peer Panel discusses ways to attract funds--and preparing tomorrow's leaders for that process.
- Reform needed not just for schools - Jamie LaRue comments on the need to do what we know works.
Future library leaders
- Are we doing enough to create the next generation of leaders? - Steven J. Bell and Wayne Bivens-Tatum post key questions on future leadership; several librarians respond. That article links to several other resources not repeated here.
- Leadership and succession - Leslie Dillon identifies varied perspectives on future leadership.
- Time management - Notes on managing time and energy.
- What keeps you up at night? - Library relevance and staff development are some of the issues mentioned by the PLN Challenge Panel.
